Trust principle

Principle

If I trust you, I will accept what you say as true and expose my
vulnerabilities to you.

How it works

Trust is the basic unit of
social glue that enables us interact without fear.

No harm

I will trust and work with people who do not harm me. You can be passive or
active in your approach to harm.

Passive no-harm is when you do not actively or deliberately act to harm me.
However, you might still stand by and let others harm me, so active no-harm is
where you act positively to protect me from harm. Of course, I will trust a
active protector even more than a passive 'no harm' friend.

Reliability

If you always do what you say you are going to do, it makes your behavior
very predictable, which means I can feel even safer around you. It also means
that if I ask you do something I do not need to keep checking up on you.

Truth

I do not know everything and may lean on your expertise. If you always tell
me the truth then I know that I can rely on what you say and not have to do any
further checking up.

Truth and reliability also extend to the whole notion of 'integrity', where a
person is true to their values
and follows common social norms.

So what?

Build trust by:

Doing no harm and actively seek to protect people, demonstrating that you
care about them personally.